Faith has never come easily for me. I’ve often described my spiritual journey and faith itself as a two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of process, with doubt rearing its ugly head from time to time, and me clamoring to smack it down like I’m playing whack-a-mole at the local carnival.
This past summer I traveled to Tuscany on a spiritual writers’ retreat expecting to uncover clarity and direction in my vocation. Instead I ended up spiraling into a dark night of the soul I never saw coming. Sitting cross-legged under a grove of trees overlooking the golden Tuscan hills, I got real with God real fast. It was the quintessential “I believe, help my unbelief!” moment, and it left me wrung out and reeling. God and I wrestled it out like never before.
Two days later, hands trembling, voice shaking, I told my traveling companions about my dark night. It was a confession of sorts, and that community of brothers and sisters — most of whom I’d met for the first time only days before — gathered around and held me close. They lamented with me. They consoled me. And most of all, they gave me hope.
When, following my sputtering confession, one of my new friends declared, “God delights in you,” I tucked that word of encouragement into my heart. Since then I’ve taken it out and reexamined it again and again.
My dark-night-of-the-soul experience in Italy and how I’ve come to understand it was a game-changer for me, a life-changer. As Ann Voskamp writes in her new book, The Broken Way, “Our God wants the most unwanted parts of us the most…Nothing pleases God more than letting Him touch the places you think don’t please Him. God is drawn to broken things — so he can draw the most beautiful things.”
Cracking open wide in Tuscany allowed me to receive the understanding that just as I delight in my own children, God delights in me. He loves me like I love them, sweetly, tenderly, fiercely, but infinitely, unfathomably more. I never really understood that. I never really believed it.
Truth be told, three months later I’m still leaning hard into what it really means that God delights in me – what it looks like and feels like. I’m leaning hard into believing it. I’m allowing God to teach me, to show me what he is doing for me, to show me what I need to enter into. God is already loving, he is already delighting in, and he desires that we enter into that space. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does.” (3:28, Msg.)
Ann Voskamp’s book The Broken Way has helped me move farther along in this journey. She’s put words around the unexplainable and indescribable. She has given language to the mysterious, inexplicable yet sometimes palpable presence of God.
“Belovedness is the center of being, the only real identity, God’s only name for you, the only identity he gives you,” she writes. “And you won’t ever feel like you belong anywhere until you choose to listen to your heart beating out that you do — unconditionally, irrevocably. Until you let yourself feel the truth of that – the truth your heart has always known because He who made it wrote your name right there.”
A long time ago I looked up the origin of my name, Michelle. It is derived from the Hebrew name Michael, which means, in some interpretations, “He who is closest to God,” as well as, interestingly, the question, “Who is like God?” The online site I visited noted that in Hebrew that’s a rhetorical question, because no person is like God.
I laughed when I read that bit about the rhetorical question, because honestly, it’s so like me to question my identity as one who is “like God.” Who me? Flawed, questioning, always-seemingly-on-the-cusp-of-unbelief me? But the answer is, inexplicably and unfathomably, yes, an emphatic yes. For me and for you, too. For all of us. We are like God because we are created in his image– imago dei. Each of us is wholly his, loved by him, beloved, called into oneness with him.
God calls us to walk toward that which we despise most about ourselves, because he knows that when we face that hard, ugly place head-on, we will finally be fully surrendered. And finally fully surrendered, we will finally fully find him.
God is in our most broken places, the parts of ourselves we least want to admit or expose to the world and perhaps especially to our own selves. For me, that’s my wrestle with doubt and unbelief. God ironically calls me to step into that very place, to acknowledge its existence, not to run and hide from it, but strangely, to offer it, my most broken place, to him. I know, it hardly makes sense. But yet it does. Because he is there, even there. Because there is no place God is not.
I want to add, for the record, that Ann Voskamp doesn’t need me to write a review of her book. As I write this, The Broken Way, which releases today, is probably already number 1 on Amazon, and it will likely go on to become a New York Times bestseller, just like One Thousand Gifts. But here’s the deal: I wrote this blog post because I couldn’t not write this blog post. Like its predecessor, One Thousand Gifts, The Broken Way has had a lasting impact on me. Beautifully written and full of profound wisdom, this book is a life-changer, if you allow Ann’s words — God’s message, really, spoken through her — to sink in deep and change you. Powerful, prophetic, vulnerable and deeply authentic, The Broken Way is not an easy or a quick read, but it’s absolutely a must-read.
From one “Who is Like God?” to another… thank you!
Girlfriend, I’ll walk this broken way with you… xo
Hey Michelle…..From one who hasn’t had much time–or inclination I might add–to read many blogs at all lately, I am struck by this today. The title was what drew me in and I wasn’t disappointed. I thank you, as always, for being so transparent in your “wrestle” with God, your struggle with doubt & unbelief. For I too am in the “wrestle” once again.
My “behaviour” of late has not been consistent with who I “claim” to be. I cannot blame it all on the devil, although I do feel I’m wrestling with those invisible “principalities & powers” spoken of in Ephesians 6:12. But mostly? It’s my own selfish will, my desire to return to some of my old ways, the things about myself I had so come to deplore. My untameable tongue, my sarcastic brand of humour, my negativity about the world around me, particularly regarding politicians & the like. Instead of praying, I join into the complaining & lamenting as one who has no hope. (Even though I am Canadian, I have been sucked into the vortex of your upcoming election. I confess I am nothing more than terrified for the future of your country, our nearest neighbours.)
I have been sitting here, believing that God can, but won’t, forgive me for these past several months. For all the sin in my life that keeps stockpiling. That I am selfish, strong-willed in the wrong direction, devoid of interest in the Word…I could go on & on. And lest I forget, the hypocrisy right now that is my life. But truly? You have given me hope today, hope for little ole me. Deep within my heart, I know I’ve been rebelling out of all the broken places within me. But the last 2 paragraphs you’ve written–before your acknowledgement that you don’t need to endorse Ann’s new book–hit me right between the eyes. How have I become so disillusioned as to believe that God wants nothing to do with me in all of this? He knows me better than I know myself. But what I DO know of myself, these are the very things that I’ve feared bringing before Him. Because I know, even after confession & the hope of real repentance in my heart & behaviour, I’ve been prone to relapse again & again. And I’m despising myself for that. I am weak. I am prone to wander, like that old hymn says. I need, more than anything else, to get on my face before God. To rend my heart. To bring words before Him, agreeing with Him that I’ve wandered afar. That He will “delight” in me for that? I confess that I question that. Seldom have I ever “felt” His delight in me. But today? I will CHOOSE to believe it.
Thank you so much Michelle. Your voice speaks into my heart OFTEN, and right on time. God uses you in my life, my friend.
Love, jillie
love your raw honesty. My mom would always end letters – remembering writing hand written letters? – God loves you and so do I. It has taken me a life time and I am still learning that I am a beloved child of God. Will we ever fully believe this???
Thank you for your honesty and vulnerability. I have, from time to time wandered in the lonely and frightening place of wondering, and then moved towards the living, breathing statement of beginning again faith – “I believe, help me overcome my unbelief. ” In His great mercy and grace He continually draws me out the darkness into His marvelous light. He never gives up on me, on any of us. He holds us close to His heart that beats with unending, infinite, tenderhearted love and never leaves or forsake. This is what I cling to – His everlasting Arms. And as Corrie Ten Boom so aptly said, “There is no pit that is so deep that He is not deeper still, for ‘UNDERNEATH,’ are the Everlasting Arms. “
Thank you for this, Judy. I guess this is what I was trying to say, but you’ve said it so much better than I! I sometimes forget His promise to “never leave nor forsake” even though I KNOW it’s true. He has NEVER given up on me, ESPECIALLY when I give up on myself. Even now, He is wooing me back, just as He’s done more than once before. He is always good, always kind.
Those doubts . . . always my demons, too, Michelle. Thank goodness God wants all of us, broken and fragile and hurting, and loves us without measure!
I will definitely have to read Ann’s book. Thanks for this honest and touching review
Blessings!
I heard a preacher say that “doubt is evidence of faith.” I knee-jerked thinking it didn’t make sense but I pondered it and I think he was correct in the sense that only those who have faith can doubt. Those who have no faith are not doubters. I know—this statement may be a lame thing that wouldn’t hold up to logic if you took it all the way, but it helped me. Maybe it would help you? But as many times as I have doubted, every time I come back stronger in my faith for it. I’m a scrapper and I dig in and deeper, but I haven’t always. Once I was broken all the way, in a lockdown unit in a mental health hospital. God has redeemed every bit of that brokenness. It shouldn’t be so but it is. Thank you for sharing your path and offering a place for me to share mine.
Michelle, have been gone all day, but how this speaks. Thank you for your broken honesty.
Love
Lynn
I knew you had more to come from that Tuscany trip! This sentence, ” Cracking open wide in Tuscany allowed me to receive the understanding that just as I delight in my own children, God delights in me. He loves me like I love them, sweetly, tenderly, fiercely, but infinitely, unfathomably more,” nails it on two important points: how much we are loved and how necessary the crack up is to really experience it. Keep mining the depths of that trip for us, your readers:) Thank you!
Letting God inside and touch our brokenness doesn’t make sense, but it brings healing and hope. Let us have the courage to be vulnerable with God.
love you, Michelle
I share your view for the large part, I believe that some points are worth having a more
sophisticated appearance to comprehend what is happening.